The Words

Those loyal, wonderful words, how they save me! They arrive during snippets of time in my life when nothing else will work. Because the human existence leads you to places where you could never imagine yourself, the only way to make sense of it all is to try and turn chaos into logic by documenting the experience. This process, strictly governed by orderly sequences of sentences and paragraphs, forces random, inexplicable events to fall into the proper perspective with ease.
One example of this process would be the poem entitled This is to Say, written for my siblings the Christmas after my father died. The poem was my gift to them that year. A photo of Dad smiling, taken from an especially merry Christmas past, was positioned above the text, all placed in a beautiful wood frame. Both my brother and sister were moved beyond the words, to a place where only their tears could speak for them.
It was also my father’s death that inspired a scene in my first novel. The scene, which depicts the heroine of my story being torn apart by grief after losing her husband, would have been flat and unmoving had it not been for the words, which came to usher me through my own grief and breathe life into my characters.
The words returned once again, remaining by my side during the blackest hours of my life. After falling victim to a rapist, they nursed me through the pain so that I could move on to compose a second novel. My writing career could have ended there, along with my life, but the words refused such a censorship. The book contains a fictitious villain that is the embodiment of my attacker in reality. I never saw him brought to justice in life; although, I am able to witness it on paper, over and over again if I wish.
It is not only heartbreak that summons the words. Sometimes the most unexpected event can cause the words to surface like a rush of adrenaline. I can thank a wrong turn down a swampy, alligator and snake infested river for the poem The Byzantine Wilderness, which captures the beauty and danger of Florida’s conservation areas.
The words arrive in good times, as well as bad. They have always been there to help me express the intense feelings I have for my son and his father. Love, it seems, is as inspirational a muse as that of pain, fear and loss combined.
Finally, after these thirty-seven years, I have discovered the origin of the words. They effervesce from a place inside my soul that houses an emotional pressure valve of sorts. It functions not only as a release, but also serves to repair damage and to always protect me. It makes no difference whether the work is a piece of far out fiction or a newspaper advertisement. The words, regardless of purpose, will coalesce; transforming into an expression of myself that will live forever.